Smoke Stars
by Masquerading with Shadows
Summary: And spend your last breath under city lights. / Carly-centric.


When she's about three, Carly decides that she wants to be a nurse when she grows up. Three years later, she wants to be an actress.

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Her childhood was happy – mostly. There was the occasional trip to the hospital, with its white walls and fading pictures, and the hard white bed that she used to sit on as her mother slept and she read herself a bedtime story. On the bright side, Mummy always came back, even if there were some dark room days where even a slight crack of light through a thin curtain made Mummy cringe. She thinks that her worst memory was when she saw Daddy cry in his big suit that made him look so strong.

But there was always Spencer and his colourful sculptures, and Daddy when he picked her up, and school with its grey playground and rainbow classroom filled with everyone's drawings of happy families. Even when Daddy left a couple of months after Mummy left as well for the first time was ok, because she got to lead the class to art and Spencer held her hand all the way back from the airport.

Even as a child she liked Seattle, liked watching the blurring lights through a curtain of rain. She'd watch the people run through the city, the umbrellas huddle together as they moved through the narrow path, the taxi cabs driving their way through the water on the street. She'd stay by the windowsill until Spencer picked her up and through her over his shoulder, telling her it was time to go to bed, and that _yes_, he'd stay and keep the nightmares away (but he always left eventually, and that's when the nightmares would start).

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There's a room in her apartment that is almost never opened, though she knows that sometimes the wind is able to push it open (and sometimes, she'll even risk a peak into the outlined darkness). It's her parents' room, and if she tries hard enough, she can even remember her Mummy and Daddy lying on it, side by side while she snuck in late at night, fitting herself in between them and letting them block the nightmares out.

She never goes in there, even though she knows that the photo albums and her presents to her Mummy and that one picture of a happy family with the four of them that she can only vaguely remember is in there. But sometimes she wants to, even if it's just to remember the smell of her mother and father.

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She has Daddy issues written all over her.

(And you expected her to be a s t a r .)

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It's easy to have childhood friends when you're child.

School tears Carly&Sam&Freddie apart because people change, and they move from the rooms that have colouring in pictures for walls to the walls covered in maths posters and rules. They get caught passing notes, detentions cancel their afternoon plans, and it's hard to talk when you're drowning under homework. There's also all the different classes and clubs, and suddenly their differences become a division rather than such an attraction.

They still do iCarly, and she thinks that she can really ever see happiness of Sam's face and reflected in Freddie's camera lens in those shows, and she lets herself be shown in the dying fluorescent light and let herself hold onto the thing that manages to bring everyone she knows happiness.

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She presses the ragged edge of the knife against her skin, applying pressure and letting the skin turn white. It feels like the her nail digging into her palm as she tries to block out words and forgetohjustforget. She lets her hand release the knife and watches as the skin goes from white to pink to normal.

She doesn't do it again.

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She only thinks about it when she's stressed, whether it be about homework or social status or her distorted self-image. It manages to calm her, the thought of blood dripping from her skin, the imperfection falling to the ground (even though she was born with perfection in her veins). Or maybe, it's just that one night she remembers with perfect clarity what her mother looks like.

Still, she doesn't wince, doesn't cry as the blade draws across her flesh (no goingbacks now), she merely lets it the blood come to the surface – it never falls (she can't even bleed properly).

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No one ever talks about the scars, and she's sure she's right to say that they never suspect, because, ohplease, she's not that cliché (don't need that much attention do you, attention whore? Expect the prince to save the bleeding princess – _no_). They're on her wrists, plain and simple to see, but she brushes off simple questions a thousand times lighter that she presses the blade to get the scars.

The only time someone ever notices is when it's on her thigh and her too short skirt rides up as she sits down, the red on white. She lies, the words coming easily off her tongue as they did when she practised each one of her scripts&lies in front of the mirror.

No one asks again, and really, she's not quite used to going unnoticed.

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The scars stop healing.

Lines of white, pink, red all across her body remain there months and months after she's stopped (and she didn't even do them that deep and that much). She bites her lip as her hand traces over them, some not feeling any different to the rest of her skin and none of them hurting anymore. She's scarred, and now she's certain that it's forever.

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She thinks of killing herself sometimes, often late at night with the picture of a starless night sky in her window frame. A couple of times she's even gone and looked in the bathroom cupboard, searched for those clear container that rattle when she's picks one up in her hand. She doesn't know which ones could kill her, but she knows that all of them would make her vomit until her throat was sore and bloody.

But it's all about quantity, she knows that. She thinks about overdosing on her father's anti-depressants (because the world just loves an ironic joke, and so does she), thinks about how the tablets would feel in her hand as she, thinks about how she'd wait for fate to come and claim her.

After that, the thought of the wait, she tries to swallow down the thought and focuses on making out the moon is the out-shined night sky. But it still takes her another hour to get to sleep and the city lights still shed through her window more than the stars.

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She sneaks into the girls' bathroom one day at lunch time, the thoughts and the whispers and the words from the day on an endless loop in her head. The bathroom is practically empty, confirmed with a final footstep and door squeak, followed by complete silence. Nevertheless, she winces at the shut of the cubicle door and the turn of the lock as it reverberates against the graffitied bathroom tiles.

Already her breath is speeding up, the walls starting to suffocate her, their words being shoved down her throat and joining in with her memories (fuckoff getlost useless hate love – _forever and ever_). She takes the scissors from her pocket, and without a thought draws the edge of them against her skin, watching it turn pink. She does it over and over again, letting the skin go from white to pink to red.

It's a messy scar, wide and with only a few speck of blood in it (a knife is so much better). She runs it under cold water before turning to lunch. There's no one to ask where she's been.

The scar fucking well _stings_ – that's the way it is with scissors; all hurt and no blood or relief. When she gets home, she cleans it and bandages it with a white pad and medical tape which pulls her bruised skin when she takes it off.

She bursts into hard, ice tears when she realises that the scar will never, ever fade.

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_Pentobarbital._

_Also known as yellow jacket or yellow submarines. Killer of Marilyn Munroe. _

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In her Senior Year, Sam starts to take her and Freddie out to parties under the streetlights and watchful eye of taxi cabs and skyscrapers. Freddie stops going after the first couple, telling them to call him if they get into trouble and taking five extremely reluctant minutes to finally go and walk back to the apartment. But Carly doesn't mind so much, because she likes the drunken but light-hearted chatter, and the pressed together sweaty bodies, and even those tiny shot glasses that manage to make her heart pump and her skin feel tight.

She'll turn a blind eye as she sees Sam in the dark and dingy corner, takes another sip of her glass as she thinks of her busy hands and wide blue eyes that flash with guilt and grief. Instead, she finds warmth from a cigarette when Sam isn't looking.

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It's at one of those parties that Carly encounters Griffin again, tall dark and handsome with leather on his back and a beer bottle cupped in his hand. They say hello to each other with their suddenly darkened eyes before turning away from each other and busying themselves with cool, pale liquid that manages to calm their nerves. By the end of it, Carly has a combination of numbers scribbled hastily onto her arm.

Griffin's bedroom is filled with beer bottles, motorbike posters, and the occasional cigarette stub or lacy lingerie. His bed has navy blue sheets that itch her bare, sweaty skin when he presses her down against them, and a hard mattress that has the same effect. He kisses and bites her neck, leaving marks and scars that still make her feel dirty but in the best way possible (but they still sting and they still leave a mark).

She tightens her fingers in his hair when he pulls her pants down, because, oh god she knows he knows and suddenly she doesn't feel so grounded anymore and she's f l o a t i n g away again and – _oh god, she wants a knife_. But after a slight pause, he keeps on going, letting her jeans pull around her ankles as he continues to scratch and bite and kiss and make her scream in pain and lust. Her head as never felt dizzier or focused, and oh, is she pretty again?

Afterwards, he tightens his grip on her hip as their chests are pressed together. Slowly, he moves up, beginning to move up and down her arm, feeling the rugged skin under his fingertips, before moving down to those few scars that litter her legs. She cuts him off, kissing him harshly until his lips are the same colour as her skin.

They do it again and again and again and again, and Carly starts to feel better and starts to crave the touch of Griffin's hands and lips rather than a silver blade.

(Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful sin.)

Six months later, he buys himself a plane ticket and leaves the country, and it breaks Carly down even though it was never love and it never would be. She watches from outside her window the night he leaves, thinking about all the faded stars and fluro lights in the sky, and thinks that she can see his plane leave at some point as well (but then again, she is a dirty little liar).

(Griffin's scars and marks fade, but she still has her own.)

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When she asks Sam for the drug, Sam slaps her to the floor with her dirty, drug-dealing hand. It leaves a one-sided blush on Carly's face, thin lips, and dry eyes that used to cry and shine.

"I am not, not ever, letting you kill yourself. Never, you hear me?" Sam says, getting down on her knees besides Carly, cupping her face in her hands, her palm right next to Carly's pink cheek.

"Not you, Carls, not you."

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Sometimes, she watches from a distance as Freddie kisses the smoke and the sin away from Sam's lips (yet she still has to b l e e d her sorrows away).

It's after this that she runs away from the apartment, taking only a backpack with her. She doesn't even buy a plane ticket, because Seattle is a big city, and it's a small world, and you can never even tell you anybody is behind the thick curtain of rain. No one comes looking for her, though she knows that Spencer's sad, and so is Freddie, and Sam is spending more time on the streets and in Freddie's apartment than ever.

She watches them from the side walk.

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She sits on the edge of the curb, the cool air enclosing on her through the thin jacket. She draws her finger along the dirty pavement, following the cracks and missing the cigarette butts and letting the light ash stain her already dirty fingertips. She looks down at the scars on her arms which she tries so hard to cover, but fails so miserable at; which she tries so hard to distract from with short skirts and red lipstick. But still, no cars stop.

Nobody wants a prostitute with scars.

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She's sitting under a bridge, looking at the stars as the cars zoom above her, finding an odd relief at the thought of the bridge falling on her, conjured by the loud and rumbling sounds of the engines that make the metal terribly weak and feeble in comparison. Her fingers are closing around an invisible cigarette without her permission, and her tastebuds seem to long for the liquid that she once despised so long ago.

It's slightly easier to see the stars from here, because she's further away from the brightness of the city lights that she still knows and still loves. The stars are still faint, but here they get the chance to shine just a little bit brighter, and even though she's only spent two nights here, she can't even begin to think of how many wishes she's made on them (she's not sure whether it's just her continuing to be a masochist or whether she still has a chance at being innocent or not).

Her eyes widen when she sees unmistakable shine of golden hair in faint light, and she looks around quickly to see if she could hide somewhere, or runaway. But there are only a couple of other people there and it's too late, and she's sick of running away. Instead, she smiles as if it's old time while Sam raises her eyebrows in casual surprise. She swallows the urge to runaway screaming as Sam takes another step closer to her, but somehow, the smile still doesn't leave her face.

"Hi Sam," she says – and her voice is wavering slightly and it sounds weak. "What are you doing here?"

"We're under a bridge, Carls," she replies, her eyebrows still raised. She doesn't even bother to ask why Carly is there herself, even though it's possibly less obvious than Sam's answer. Instead, she walks closer to Carly, and sits herself down beside her before she can run. Carly waits for the next question, the one that will make her burst into tears so hard that she'll never, ever stop. But instead, Sam is silent, and she's not going to be the one to break that.

They look up at the stars together, and she thinks she may even hear Sam's wish because she can see it on her face, see it in her eyes, and she knows that she's wishing on the stars as well. Without looking, Sam grabs her hand and grips it tightly, and Carly has to swallow down the bad taste in her mouth because, _oh god_, Sam could just be scared – or maybe just broken.

"Come back, Carly." It's barely above a whisper.

They stay there for at least an hour, looking at the moon and the stars, and hearing the cars up above them. Eventually, Sam lets go of Carly's hand, looks at her for only a split second, and then begins to walk away.

_(See you around?)_

She can't help herself – she follows.

She gets the urge to cry again when she walks into her old apartment. Sam opens the door, and a flood of memories comes rushing back to her, all the good, all the bad together. Spencer stares at her wordlessly until picking her up, light as a feather, and holding her as close to his chest as humanly possible. Somewhere from the corner of her eye, she sees Sam knock on Freddie's door and sees him come out (the first thing he does when he sees her is kiss Sam).

That night, Spencer tucks her in.

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She stays there one whole day – twenty eight hours all together – before she leaves.

She leaves because, already, she's missing the stars and all her denied wishes (but mostly she leaves because instead of craving the smell of smoke and the taste of burning liquor, she wants the touch of a silver blade, and she's not bringing everyone down for the sake of her masochistic amusement).

She leaves at 5.13am. She walks out onto the street and calls a taxi, watching as the yellow cab blends in with the fading fluro lights. The lights are pretty against the still, but barely, dark blue sky, she thinks to herself. She gets in, and tells the taxi driver to take her to anywhere, just so long as she stays in the shine of the lights.

At this time, the lights seem to dazzle everybody, because the taxi crashes at 5.31am – she sees it on the glowing car clock – and brings down another car with it. Her last moments are are spent putting pictures to the sound of red and blood red flashing lights, seeing city lghts and watching as each one of her stars fade.

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_:: but now i'm on my own ::_

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**Disclaimer: I do not own iCarly, or the last line which is taken from **_**City Lights**_** by Parade the Day. **

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**A/N: Yeah, I'm on a roll. PM/Review if you didn't understand it, or hated it etc. **


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